Lygia Clark was born in Brazil in 1920 and, with other Brazilian artists, founded
the neo-concrete movement in 1959, which sought more sensuality and feeling than
concrete art had displayed. Before that, Clark had studied in Paris in the early
1950s with Fernand Léger and others. This show focuses on Clark’s work of the ’50s,
and at the same time shows her wide range of concerns: formal, spatial, architectural,
as well as the role of the viewer in interacting with spatial forms.

Clark’s precise attention to detail, and her interest in the subtle effects of formal
variation, are highlighted in the show’s only wall text, a long quotation from her
own writing. Amongside detailing some of her exacting formal concerns, she clearly
had bold ambitions for her work: “the importance of this new search is as great as
if we were entering a new Renaissance period”.

Her concernsare highlighted especially by a series of gouaches that show her exploring
the illusionistic potential of a linear composition of triangles and rhombuses, using
tone to make various arrangements of wedge-shaped forms. In a small upstairs room
a double-sided collage shows a similar process at work: the addition of just two
lines lifts a flat black and white form into a suggestion of architectural space.

Clark’s maquettes of interiors show that she was also interested in the potential
of real space. One of these has a decorative aspect: a room with a bench, the walls
painted with oblongs in a variety of earthy hues, with two doors interrupting the
composition. A second maquette shows what could be a whole building, a large space
covered by a wide flat roof, with the potential to rearrange the interior by moving
the walls. Such designs unfortunately remained as mere sketches, and one wonders
what they would have been like to live in. The austerely modernist tenor of the design
is softened by the thought that the resident might have had direct control over the
form of their living space.

The manipulation of spatial form did become a reality with Clark’s series of Bichos
(Critters). Here, the speculative translation of two-dimensional form into three
dimensions is rendered real. A set of hinged plates might lie flat, but can be picked
up and endlessly manipulated in space as an interactive sculpture. One such 1959
aluminium maquette is inevitably untouchable in its vitrine, but a plastic version
is on hand for curious visitors to play with. Perhaps it is not surprising that with
such close attention to formal matters, there is little colour on show here. Two
gouaches and a larger painting hint at Clark’s subtle sense of colour, a Superficie
Modulada from 1956, in particular, showing a delicacy of feeling that is elsewhere
abundantly visible in her careful compositions.